It probably goes without saying that anyone raised in a stressful, traumatizing, or otherwise dysfunctional household (hello, everyone) are probably not very in touch with their values.

Real confidence, has nothing to do with cutting others down or making sure the people around us seem smaller. Real confidence is built in faith, believing there is enough to go around for everyone, and we can build upon ourselves while supporting and building others up. There is enough, with faith, for everyone.

There’s a lot of talk in the therapeutic and self-help worlds about creating a “safe space.” Many of us who have experienced trauma or stressed out childhoods think about a “safe space” and think you gotta be BLEEPING me.

Isolation is not proof of our lack of value to others. It is an opportunity to prove our value to ourselves. It is a chance to build a skill set for making real connections and to filter out those who do not share our values.

Meditation is how we change our relationship with the internal voice of worry or fear, so that we can turn the volume down on it (ideally through kindness and compassion) and turn the volume up on intuition (i.e. the presence of Good or God in our lives).

If God is unpalatable right now, it’s okay to just explore having faith in Good. It’s available to us all and it always will be.

Rarely are there brakes or steering involved, but this, my friends, is where prayer, meditation, and faith come in.

Don’t get me wrong, I still have buttons and they still get pushed, but not like they used to.

My God, not like they used to.

In good times or bad, prayer, meditation, and practicing active faith appears to be the stuff upon which greener grasses grow. By golly, I wish I had understood that sooner.

For all of you out there wondering if or how prayer even works, I am here to ask does it even matter if it actually works?

Faith isn’t the state of being fearless, it is a tool to soften the fear.

It’s very difficult to make sound decisions if we’re operating with an inner demon that is questioning, deriding, criticizing, or taunting our every move.

I don’t know exactly how faith works, but it does.

And I know that there is peace, calm, love, and care beyond the quiet of prayer and meditation.

The most disconcerting thing about change and growth is it does exactly what it is meant to do - it changes who we are - and if that’s not disconcerting, I don’t know what is. 

Rest assured, the people who are treating us terribly are doing the same to others, and worse, they are doing it to themselves. That isn’t an excuse, but faith brought me to a place of compassion for all of us caught in that terrible dance.

Faith has helped me make really hard choices to feel better and be more safe, and I genuinely hope it may do the same for you, too.

Saying Everything happens for a reason to anyone who has lost a loved one or gone through heartbreak recently is like asking to get your teeth punched in. It’s just plain ill advised.

Getting what we want and knowing what to do with it often requires a spiritual reset first, where we’re focused on calm and healing and we’re not seeking anything at all, other than peace, wellness, and self-awareness. 

Call it whatever we want, it’s always here for us, the question is are we ready to receive it, believe in it, and not BLEEP it up?

Call it whatever you want - socially inept, a bull in a social china shop (my personal favorite), confusing, confused, an imposter, masking, a wolf in sheep’s clothing - many of us are working very hard at getting it right (whatever it may be) while inadvertently acting like a robot wearing human skin.